Page 62 of Howl for the Gargoyle

Natalie shrugged. Ah. So she was going to make me speak for myself. Forcibly hold me in the room, yes, but leave the rest to me.

"I…am a client at MSA," I said, reminding myself that there was no shame in that fact and that Sunny had been one herself.

Before she and Khell mated.

"Oh," she said, and her cheeks went pink. "I suppose…Natalie mentioned Khell and I…"

"I did, sorry, but—"

Sunny shrugged and slid over to the couch, falling into it with the ease of a familiar visitor. I moved more stiffly to join her, and Natalie sat on the floor, placing the cupcakes on the coffee table between us.

"I'm not embarrassed. Khell and I did have to have an awkward conversation with my parents about how we met, but at the end of the day…" Sunny's smile was silky. "I took my man home with me."

"How did that happen? If it's okay for me to ask," I said, reaching for the triple chocolate cupcake at the center of the plate, putting all my focus into peeling back the paper wrapper.

"Well, I mean, obviously I had no idea Khell was forming a mating bond, but I knew pretty fast I was in big feels," Sunny said.

Big feels, I thought, nodding along. Big feels was much easier to swallow than a permanent attachment. Maybe that was what I was dealing with now. Not mating. Just big feels.

"He says he knew he was in deep shit around the same time as me, but I'd just broken up with a long-term boyfriend and we were in the awkward stage of being in an MSA contract, so when I left on my last day I did think that was sort of…the end of it," Sunny continued, frowning to herself while accepting the cupcake topped with a raspberry that Natalie passed to her. "Except I just couldn't not see him again, even though I knew my feelings for him were super inappropriate. So I booked another appointment, and I found out then that he'd quit and had just come back to me as a freelancer. Khell says I should've realized that meant he really wanted to see me—"

"You absolutely should've realized," Natalie said, then held up her hands as Sunny glanced at her. "Sorry, just listening."

"Anyway, I tried to back out and Khell chased me down and told me about the mating thing, and even though that was way too much to hear under fairly confusing circumstances, it was enough for that night to know he really wanted to be with me, and that was the only reason he'd quit MSA," Sunny said, blushing again and then pausing to blink at me. "That was a lot. Sorry. I got carried away and—"

"No! No, that's good to hear," I said.

"Soo…what species are you paired with?" Sunny asked, waggling her eyebrows.

I knew it would give the whole thing away if I said. Gargoyles weren't common, and these were Rafe's friends, and the whole thing was completely tangled and totally against any confidentiality clause, probably...but I was already in a mess, wasn't I? I'd developed big feels for my contracted sex partner.

"Gargoyle," I said.

Sunny's mouth rounded to an O, and then so did her eyes. "Oh," she said unnecessarily. And it was just a single note of a sound, but it said too much. Oh, no. Oh, dear. Oh, I'm sorry.

"Yeah," I sighed out, sinking back into Natalie's couch and taking a massive bite of cupcake.

"No, no. Rafe didn't do anything wrong," I repeated. "He was a perfect partner. Please, is there any way I can talk to him directly? I don't want him thinking I had complaints."

"But you're canceling your appointments," the tight voice on the end of the line replied, not for the first time.

I sighed. "Not because I want to. I'm sorry, listen—I can…I can keep my next appointment, but I should say this to him, and if you can't connect me to him—"

"We owe our agents and workers as much right to their privacy as we do our clients."

I paced my apartment, canines biting down on the inside of my lips to restrain my growl, claws twisting around strands of my hair and tugging. "I understand that, of course," I said.

But your worker and I fucked in person once for fun, and I don't think he'd mind a phone call.

"Ma'am—"

"Hannah, please," I snarled.

"I'm not going to reschedule an appointment under these circumstances when you're asking for personal contact information. This is irregular and inappropriate." This was definitely that little antlered bureaucrat I had dealt with after appointments sometimes. I wanted to growl and remind him that in the hierarchy of the food chain, I definitely was the one looking down at him like dinner. "You can give your exit interview, which will be passed along to your former partner."

"Fuck," I whispered, falling still in the center of my living room. Fuck.

I'd fucked up. I'd been letting Sunny's story about how she and Khell got together roll through my head for days. My appointment with Rafe was looming closer, and I was seventy-five percent terrified of seeing him and knowing for certain how deeply I'd let myself fall, and seventy-five percent excited because it'd been weeks and I missed his voice and I missed his cooking and I missed the sex and I missed the conversations—

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